By Riki Goldstein February 17, 2021
“What sets Shlomo Yehuda’s music apart is that he innovates musical ‘chiddushim’ and yet maintains a totally familiar sound”
While fans have been waiting since Shir 2 came out in 2016 for the next Shir album to emerge, composer SHLOMO YEHUDA RECHNITZ has been working on it for a lot longer than you’d think. Yitzy Berry, who together with his partner, Eli Klein, arranged six of the songs on the new Shir 3, explains that there had been back-and-forth between them about some of the songs for around four years.
“The work began when Eli and I were in L.A., together with producer David Fadida, around four years ago, and continued when Shlomo Yehuda came to Eretz Yisrael, before coronavirus,” says Berry. “Recently, of course, it’s been long distance.”
Rav Moshe Weinberger still holds tight to his father’s tefillin and simple faith
Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab, Family archives
One Shabbos about a year ago, I joined Seudah Shlishis at Yeshiva Ateres Shimon in Far Rockaway, an extraordinary place bursting with young men who maybe didn’t have an easy time of it, who’d fallen or been nudged out of the system. The yeshivah has welcomed them, reassured them, restored them, and there, in a darkened room, the Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Mordechai Yehuda Groner, was speaking to the boys lining both sides of a long table.
He was talking about the eternity of the neshamah, of its essential purity, and he suddenly cried out, “You guys saw the tefillin. You saw them. You know that those are your tefillin too.”